Robert Wilonsky Declares Dallas “The Greatest City in the World, By Far”

The Dallas Morning News has produced the video you see above. It’s an interesting piece of work. The editor of the Dallas Observer, Joe Tone, certainly thought so. I direct you to his comment about Robert Wilonsky, his former employee. Me, I was more curious about the statement that Wilonsky makes at the end of the video. Listen, I love Dallas. Happy to live here since 1976 or so. But the greatest city in the world? By far? I don’t think even Mayor Rawlings would feel comfortable with that claim.

Side note: I tried to leave a comment on Tone’s post and encountered the Observer‘s new sign-in widget called My Voice Nation. As Ms. Brown would say, ain’t nobody got time for that. (Addendum to side note: I reserve the right to change my stance on this sign-in widget the minute we install our own suchlike widget.)

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17 comments on “Robert Wilonsky Declares Dallas “The Greatest City in the World, By Far””

[shakes head] After all these years and all these fights over what matters locally, it’s a typical Morning News effort when it comes to promoting its journalism: There’s not a single arts writer featured.

It did not escape my notice that after Robert Wilonsky brags that the DMN is “THE most important news source in this city, if not this state, if not this region,” we then see a reporter covering a story about little people who run an ice cream truck and Terry Box talking about how cool it is to drive around in free cars.

I’d heard production rumors about a Being Christopher Guest project when I was out in L.A. a couple months ago, but I didn’t know there really was a trailer out yet. So they wrote the portal into the new digital guy’s office…and the ironic twist on the puppeteer role…awesome!

@Typical Timmy: So if I say, “Jeremiah Weed is awesome,” that’s different than my saying, “To me, Jeremiah Weed is awesome”? One is a statement of fact and the other is just a profession of love for Jeremiah Weed?

Your example is a bit flawed. A better analog would be “To me, Jeremiah Weed has the best taste, by far.”

cf.: “To me, my wife is the most beautiful woman in the world, by far.” It’s clearly the sort of comment that’s not really intended as a declaration of actual empirical, objective fact admitting of objective proof. The phrase “to me” (expressly stated, or even absent but implied) sets it up as an entirely subjective evaluation, which means Wilonsky’s correct (assuming he’s telling the truth about how he feels).

Given the identity of the narrator, I guess this represents the bold vision of the new digital managing manager? a VIDEO that ends with a loving camera pan across a stack of old books: priceless. Next installment: Four excruciating minutes of Wilonsky poring over faded old photos from the archives, with his mini-me at his side. Or maybe a hard-hat excavation to where the printing presses used to be.

True, the video is weird and not that exciting. It ignores most of the work and the reporters who are changing things and delighting readers every day. But, look, it’s just a video that interviews just a few people. So, here’s another response one might have: Hey, that’s neat that the reporters at my newspaper take their role in society seriously, that they love their jobs, that they actually get excited every day about the city where I live.

What do you notice? Besides that it’s basically the same video, not one single reporter featured in that earlier video is still employed at the DMN. Leeson, Ramshaw, Taylor, Sergio … they’re all gone. Some were laid off, some took buyouts, some left for greener pastures. But they are all gone. Wonder how long the stars of the 2012 video will be around?